Oakland shifts funds, cuts school library staff
Trish Belenson, a library technician at Bella Vista Elementary School in East Oakland, transformed the library during her three years at the school. She updated the school’s collection, weeding out more than 3,000 old titles while adding more than 1,500 new books. She created a website for the library. This school year, Belenson said the library has circulated more than 14,000 books to the school’s 462 students.
That’s an amazing 30 books checked out per student this year.
This is how the Oakland Unified School District rewarded Belenson: Her hours were cut from 24 per week to eight per week for next school year, and she’s been reassigned to another school.
“It’s hard to focus on the real needs when there’s not a lot of stability with people’s jobs,” Belenson said. “It’s a huge hit to my family situation. Not only my salary, but also my benefits.”
Belenson told me she pays about $200 per paycheck for family health benefits through the school district.
Belenson, whose husband and daughter are on her insurance, is in this uncertain position because the school district changed the formula for allocating money for Measure G-funded library staff positions for the 2019-20 school year. Measure G is a parcel tax that generates $20 million annually with about $1.6 million spent on school libraries.
Under the old plan, the funds were allocated to schools
to operate full- or part-time libraries. Schools in underprivileged areas received a larger portion of money. Schools in affluent neighborhoods, where parents often fund school libraries through PTAs, received less Measure G money, according to librarians who work in the schools.
Measure G funds helped staff more than 30 libraries. Long-dormant libraries at West Oakland Middle School and Frick Impact Academy in East Oakland were opened because of the funding.
The new plan evenly distributes funds to schools that have 85% of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch. Fiftythree schools will receive $30,373.
Sure, under the new plan about 20 more schools will receive money, but the overall quality of libraries will suffer because $30,373 per school isn’t enough to pay the salary of a library staffer. The new plan will hurt libraries that had a bigger share of the funds because less money means they have to reduce librarian hours or eliminate library positions.
Back in January when the plan was announced, John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified, told me the change was about giving schools more control of the Measure G money and that the district was “still kind of determining exactly the impact it’s going to have on individual schools and their libraries.”
Less than two weeks before the end of the school year, the district is still determining the impact.
“We won’t have it all complete for another couple weeks,” Sasaki told me in an email.
Lori Sasaki, a teacher librarian at Bret Harte Middle School in East Oakland for two years, isn’t waiting for the district to figure things out. Sasaki, who isn’t related to John Sasaki, accepted a job at San Leandro High School for the next school year.
“I wasn’t planning to leave,” she told me. “I had to find a position where funding is guaranteed from year to year. I don’t have to spend my time advocating and fighting for the survival of libraries, and I can actually do my job.”
Libraries can’t run without librarians. In 2018, the district said 24 of its 84 libraries were completely closed. Many of the libraries considered open aren’t staffed daily or staffed by librarians at all. And some don’t allow students to check out books.
Belenson, who was Bella Vista’s only library staffer, said she was told the district is spending the money on school supplies and library books and that a computer teacher may take on the role of librarian. Linda Flynn, the school’s principal, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The district should better fund all school libraries.
Libraries impact student literacy, especially for students of color who come from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Oakland’s students need all the help they can get because, for the third year in a row, more than half of the district’s students who took the Scholastic Reading Inventory test, an assessment of performance, are reading below their grade level.
What’s more, the district partnered with Diablo Valley College for a library tech program to strengthen the skills and qualifications of library clerks. Belenson completed the 18-month program in 2018.
“Why make an investment in something that you’re not going to be able to sustain?” she said.
When Cristal Fiel, a librarian at Frick Impact Academy in East Oakland, was told her position is being eliminated, she didn’t wait to learn whether she’d possibly get reassigned within the district. She got a job at a private school in San Francisco. She said it was a tough decision to leave the district because she wants to work with students of color. But living in the Bay Area is expensive, and the district doesn’t provide job security for librarians.
“As a woman of color, I see myself in spaces where I’m supporting primarily youth of color,” she said. “It’s important that the students can see themselves in the teachers that are in the classrooms with them or in the library with them.”
Oakland schools have long been hampered by dysfunction in the district’s central office, but the Measure G plan confounds reason because it’s harming schools that originally benefited from the measure. Frick’s library was closed for a decade. When it reopened in 2017 with Measure G funds, students were checking out more books than any other middle school in the district.
I went to Bell Vista in February and saw students pour into the library during their lunch recess. They made art with pipe cleaners, beads, spoons and paper. Some students sat in chairs to read while others stretched out on the floor. Two students huddled with crayons and markers to work on their comic strip.
“Is ‘I am Pusheen’ back yet?” one student asked Belenson, referring to “I Am Pusheen the Cat,” a popular children’s book.
she responded. “You’ve been waiting for that book for a couple of weeks now.”
In March, the district slashed $22 million in spending to balance its budget, cutting the restorative justice program, the foster youth case management program and library funds. In April, the Oakland City Council approved $1.2 million in funding to save the programs — $690,000 for restorative justice, $358,000 for foster youth case management and $151,000 for libraries.
But instead of propping up thriving libraries like Bella Vista’s, the district plans to spread the money evenly to more schools. Wouldn’t it be prudent to reinforce libraries the district has already invested money in to build collections and train library technicians?
“Those are the kinds of things I have to leave, because those decisions make no sense to me,” Lori Sasaki said. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr